Nefertiti

Across the Audience Chamber, Nefertiti said, “You’re not leaving, are you?”

I looked at my sister with the crook and flail of Egypt in her hand, still worried that she was going to be alone. “I have two sons across the river waiting for me.”

“But you’ll come back in the evenings, won’t you? You’ll come every day?”

“We’ll come every evening,” I promised. “I’ll bring Baraka and Tut so they can grow up with their cousins.” She frowned deeply, and I said, “He’s my son, Nefertiti. He’s no more a Prince of Egypt now than Baraka or Nakhtmin.”

Nefertiti bit back what she wanted to say. “But you will come,” she repeated.

“Yes,” I replied, and added to myself, As I have always done.

Heqet was singing softly to Baraka and little Tutankhamun, hovering in the open window that looked out over the sweeping gardens. She looked up when she heard our footfalls along the path, then rushed out to the loggia to greet us.

“A woman named Ipu was here to see you, my lady. She left this.” Heqet indicated a small box on the table. “She’s says it’s something new she found. She thought you might want it for your garden.”

I opened the wooden lid, and inside was a small, pink flower still attached to its root. It was in bloom, and I ran my finger over its delicate petals. They were long and smooth, the texture of linen that’s been woven very fine. I studied its perfect color, the shade of a setting sun. To have my garden, my home, and my family, to be able to step into the sunshine and feel the warm soil beneath my hands and the life growing beneath my feet…

Heqet stopped what she was doing. “Are you well, my lady?”

“Yes. I am simply glad to be home.”

Heqet straightened, surveying the painted walls and linen baskets. “And what will you do now without the court?” she asked me.

“I will fulfill my destiny,” I said. “In my children’s nursery and in my garden.”

I knocked on the painted door with its carved image of a ship at sea.

“My lady!” Ipu’s squeal of pleasure echoed in the streets.

Her cheeks were plumper and her hair had grown past her shoulders. The wail of a tiny voice broke out behind her, where Kamoses was waiting in his father’s arms. I was astonished at how he had grown. “Look how big!”

“More than a year now. And he’s such a pleasure that I’m ready to do it again.” She rested her hand on her stomach and smiled. “In Mesore.”

I gasped. “Oh, Ipu…”

“Look who’s talking!” she cried. “You are the mother of two sons.” She stepped back to look at me and beamed. “Oh, my lady. After so long.” She embraced me, then ushered me inside.

“Welcome home,” Djedi said. He looked healthy and contented. Plague had not come to any city but Amarna, and I tried not to think what that meant.

“So this is Kamoses,” I said, trying to imagine that this was the same baby I had waved farewell to a year ago on the quay. “He is handsome. He has your nose,” I told Ipu.

“And Djedi’s eyes. The midwife says he’ll be wealthy.”

“How does she know?”

“Because his first cry was nub.”

I laughed loudly. “Gold? I have missed you, Ipu.”

“And Ipu has missed you.” Djedi grinned. “You were all she would talk about.”

“Amarna is all anyone would talk about,” she confided. “No one knew what to believe. First a Durbar, then a coregent, then plague. Is it true”—her voice fell—“that Pharaoh sent an arm to the king of Assyria?” I nodded, and Ipu shook her head. “Tell me everything. I want to know everything.”

So I told her of the Durbar and my sister’s coronation, then of the Black Death and Akhenaten’s offering. I described the deaths of Nefertiti’s youngest, the death of Nebnefer, and finally Tiye. When I spoke of Akhenaten’s ride through the city, Djedi placed Kamoses in his crib. He could not believe he had gone out unescorted to tear down forbidden images of Amun. “Pharaoh was full of rage,” I told him, but it was impossible to explain the bitterness in Akhenaten’s eyes when he watched his children burn in the city he had built for Aten.

“When they forbid the barges from leaving Amarna, we thought everyone inside would perish,” Ipu admitted, and her eyes grew teary. “Including you and Nakhtmin.”

I embraced her. “And we had no way of knowing whether the plague had spread. It was frightening for us, too.” Something rubbed against my leg and a large, heavy body appeared in my lap. “Bastet,” I exclaimed. I looked at Ipu.

“He followed me from the workshop one evening and never returned. You can take him back now,” she added, but I saw the hesitation in her eyes.

“Of course not. You must keep him,” I said earnestly. “He would have died with all the other palace cats had you not saved him.”

“They slaughtered the miws?”

“Every animal in the palace was put to death.”

“Where did they bury the bodies?” Djedi asked.

“Carts came and took them away.”

“Without amulets?” Djedi whispered.

“And without tombs?” Ipu cried.

“Mass graves. Holes dug in the ground and covered with sand.”

The pair of them were silent.

We walked to my house later in the warm evening, and Ipu wanted to hear the story for a second time of Kiya’s deathbed request that I should take her child. I told it again, and even the fussy Kamoses was quiet, as if he too were spellbound by the tale.

“Nothing has happened as I imagined it,” said Ipu. “Egypt is a land turned upside down. You are raising a Prince of Egypt,” she marveled.

“No, not a Prince of Egypt,” I said firmly. “Just a little boy.”

We fell into a quiet routine in Thebes, and there was a peaceful rhythm to our life. Men came from around the city to visit Nakhtmin, telling him tales of what had been happening in Thebes while Amarna was being ravaged by plague. Then they tried to tempt him back to war, saying it was a waste of his time to teach soldiers when he could be leading men to victory in Rhodes. The soldiers stood outside our house and shook their heads and looked accusingly at me.

“He is the finest general in Pharaoh’s army,” Djedefhor said. “The men can’t understand why he won’t return. They begged me to come here and ask him. Horemheb is hard. He is mirthless, and the men don’t love him the way they love Nakhtmin.”

I thought again of my father’s words, Do you trust him? and looked out to where Nakhtmin was instructing my sister’s soldiers. The muscles were hard beneath his kilt, his brow was seeded with sweat. I smiled. “They will simply have to content themselves with the knowledge that he’s turning their boys into men.”

“But what will you do while you’re not at court and he’s not fighting?”

I laughed at the earnestness in Djedefhor’s question. “Live a quiet life,” I said. “And someday Nakhtmin will teach our sons to be soldiers or scribes.”

Djedefhor looked at me strangely. “Sons?”

“There is Tut,” I reminded him sharply.